Birth of a Soul

On page 110 of Edward Tick's book War and the Soul is a powerful testimony from a Marine Vietnam veteran.

I laid my gun across my legs and, while the Vietnamese family stared at me without daring to move, I stared out the door of their hut.

That doorway was like a picture frame on the world... like I was staring out trough God's eyes. The men I fought with, the "good guys, yelled like idiots and pushed these little people around. I watched my buddies walk over to the hut right across from me... and torch it. I looked at the family cowering in fear by my side. I looked across the way at my friend, the good guy, and another terrified mamasan... the flames destroy[ing] her home.

Something woke up in me. God and evil. Honor and dishon0r. Right and wrong. These had been automatic concepts... but at that moment.... they were real, living things. You earned them by torturing yourself with questions until you really knew what was right and good and honorable, not because someone told you, but because you saw.

I watched my buddies burn another hut... they weren't gooks, for God's sak!.. They were a helpless mother and her terrified little children! After six months in the bush I saw them for the first time... they weren't evil. They weren't the enemies. They weren't the bad guys. We were!

Everything was turned around. I wanted to raise my M-16 and blast away at these crazy marauding Americans who were wasting this helpless village. Now I had a soul, and I wanted to blast away at these crazy marauding Americans who were wasting this helpless village. Now I had soul, and I wanted to save it an these people by doing the right thing and defending them, even if i cost me my life.

I just walked off in a stupor while they... torched the hut. My hut with my family in it. Where I found my soul. Where I figured out the truth. I was in a daze for a long time. Then I went numb for the rest of my tour.

At the very moment I found my soul, at the very moment it woke up and I could see the truth for the first time in my life, at that very second when I knew we were evil, it fled, I lost it.